That chorus of “I Told You So” heard around the world on Monday came from media watchers and marketers who have been patiently waiting for this day to happen.

A study released this week by OutSell notes that spending on digital advertising will be up 10% this year and will, for the first time ever, surpass, money spent on print advertising. Of the $368 billion to be spent by marketers this more…

The good folks over at the Pew Center’s Internet and American life project along with the Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted a survey to find out where and how Americans get their news. The results that were released yesterday and  splashed all over any website that would sit still (bravo, Pew, bravo!) won’t cause any of  us online junkies to fall out of our chair. As expected, TV is where most Americans still get their news with the Internet running a close second and more…

It’s been another exciting week in the world of all things Google. The little search engine with the unassuming primary colored logo has generated more headlines recently than American Idol and Obama combined. Let’s take a look at what the world’s most popular website has been up to.

Just yesterday, Google threw their hat back into the social media arena with the launch of Buzz. Google promises that Buzz will be the faster and easier way to share pictures and videos with friends and family who already belong to Gmail. Naturally Buzz is instantly compatible with smart phones and employs the latest in GPS location to gather information from neighboring businesses and hot spots. Its a gutsy move considering that Google has failed to nab the social marketing scene like Facebook has. From a marketing standpoint, Buzz could provide some much needed oomph to the social media marketing game. Buzz’s new features and Google-like accessability are appealing and send the mind reeling into more…

The Super Bowl is still five days away but the buzz around banned ads and controversial commercials continues. Last week’s ManCrunch.com ad was axed by CBS amongst cries of homophobia and discrimination. And then there’s the Focus on the Family commercial that features college football star Tim Tebow .  Naturally,  it wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without a totally disgusting misogynistic Godaddy.com that was deemed too hot for TV. The most recent advertising reject is cellphone provider KGB’s raunchy advertisement featuring a man who’s head literally goes up his backside.

All of this hoopla, while it makes for decent headlines, seems to be a cry for attention for a major event that could use a creative overall. The 2009 telecast was down in viewers compared to 2008’s record breaking numbers.  This year’s network CBS won’t likely be stirring up any Janet Jackson-like controversy as aging rockers The Who headline the halftime show. Younger viewers will be wondering “the who?” as older viewers may confuse the band’s more…

During the yesteryears of the dot com craze, companies scrambled to get branded websites up more from herd mentality than from fully understanding why they needed one. For most companies at the time, websites were mostly used as a platform to broadcast their marketing communications to potential customers and brand evangelists. Today, there has been a tectonic shift away from broadcasting out to the consumer to inviting them in and allowing for them to play an significant role in branding and marketing efforts. We’re seeing a shift from the one-way communication model where brands blare out messaging to consumers (think old disruption-based media like television, outdoor, print etc.) to the two-way conversation model (think opt-in social networking, user generated content, blogging, etc.) where advertising and communication are taking place in real time.

One such company that has embraced this model and has transformed the way they communicate is Chik-Fil-A. For those of you who don’t know, Chic-Fil-A is famous for their “Eat more Chikin” campaign delivered by cows who started a quest to convince humans to choose chicken over beef. The humorous campaign started in 1995 and slowly has successfully integrated the two-way stance on communications. While the company has not abandoned traditional media, they have beefed up (sorry about the pun) their online media with a bevy of new outlets that enable their customers to take part in their marketing and communications. And they’re at it again. Along with a healthy Facebook and Twitter presence, Chic-Fil-A recently launched a microsite (EatMoreChikin.com) which, according to clickz,

“…is the latest attempt by the restaurant chain to turn its cows — well-known from TV commercials — into viral marketing thoroughbreds. Its launch follows the company’s successful build-up of one of the biggest Facebook presences in the restaurant niche.

Are you already a fan of the cows? Then you’re in for a treat this holiday season because according to a recent PRNewswire release, Chic-Fil-A is offering the coveted 2010 edition of their annual cow-themed calendar featuring spoofs on famous works of literature to discourage burger-eating throughout the country. Titles include: Ali Barbacue, Porter Pan, Jack the Flipper and The Three Brisketeers among others. You can pick yours up for six bucks at participating restaurants or you can order online. It’s a nice offering that makes for a great stocking stuffer. Hey, chalk one up for old media.

I’ve seen a lot of shuffling of the decks at agencies over the last decade as many of them have attempted to transform the way they do business in the age of social media, search engine marketing, viral videos and all the rest that the digital age has bestowed upon us. If you’re a traditional ad agency, you either “get it” or you slowly fade into the background. One agency that proves time and time again that it “gets it” is Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Named Interactive Agency of the Year at the One Show in 2009, GSP has gotten quite a bit of attention both online and off with their latest opus. I came across the story in a post titled,  “Goodby Implores Ad executives to Embrace Change“. The post describes how  co-founder Jeff Goodby used the painting of his house as a platform to illustrate how his agency approaches communication in the age of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

I once had the good  fortune of being invited up to the shop in San Francisco just after graduating from a Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. What inspired me on that visit years ago was how the two founders, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, approached the day-to-day operations of the agency;  both were extremely passionate about the craft and creativity involved in their business and both approached advertising as if it were the greatest form of art in the world.  I remember having a half-hour conversation with Mr. Silverstein on the virtues of well-crafted typography in the hallway as he was passing by!

I digress. So it was no surprise to me when I came across the link in the above mentioned story for PoemHouse.org which demonstrated how Jeff Goodby used huge letters in exquisite type on the side of a Victorian house to get his message across.  When you visit the site you are welcomed with the following message,

“Could a house be a book? Would words be different if they were five feet high and printed on an emotional symbol of domesticity?

Is this idea a violation? And if so, is it a violation of the house or the words?

The home on Oak Avenue in St. Helena, California, is one of the most charming late Victorian houses in the Napa Valley. Built by a German family in 1892, it was at its birth a tribute to the optimism and elegance of what might be the most fertile time in English and American literary history - the era of Tennyson, Woolf, Eliot, Stevenson, London, and Bierce (the last three lived for a while in the Napa).

Here, in the summer of 2009, Oakland visual and media artist Jeff Goodby has covered the Oak Avenue house with a series of enigmatic words, set in a typeface designed in the 1760s by John Baskerville. The effect is a combination of Harry Potter and Andy Warhol and has challenged the meaning of home and book alike.’

The site was developed only after Mr. Goodby posted photos of his house idea on Facebook where it created a considerable amount of buzz.  Then all hell broke loose. Word spread like wildfire across the digital landscape. Word spread across the real world landscape too, and eventually got people off their butts and into the sunlight to rubberneck the house for themselves. Talk about driving traffic!  It’s a fine lesson on harnessing the power of the Interwebs with a simple, beautifully-crafted message. They make it look easy.

Contrary to the phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960’s, the medium is no longer the message. Take print for example, the once holy grail of advertisers is once again becoming a vehicle to deliver advertising to the masses but not in the form of ink. According to The Gaurdian,  Entertainment Weekly magazine is about to debut two video-in-print advertisements in the September issue of the publication for subscribers in the Los Angeles and New York areas. These auto-play videos will come in the form of tiny cell screens that will display short clips when the magazine is open to that page; similar to greeting cards that play a tune when you open them. Advertisers CBS and Pepsi will promote various products in the micro-video ads and are hoping to target their messages to people who enjoy getting their entertainment information from print. But are they going too far? Clearly the novelty of the medium can be a good thing and to be honest, I can’t wait to get my issue in the mail. But the message in these videos had better be pretty entertaining for readers like me not to get annoyed that advertisers snuck in a video in their favorite magazine. Recently I had the pleasure of going to AMC theaters to watch “Inglorious Basterds” and was not shocked to see television commercials being played before the movie previews. The first one was for Starburst and I have to admit, it was entertaining and funny, so I gave them a hearty thumbs up. The next two were pretty lame, which led me to direct my displeasure at both AMC and the advertisers. I say if you’re going to shove advertisements in front of unsuspecting faces, you’d better at least give your audience something more than a sales pitch. But I suspect that television commercials running before movie trailers will become the norm unless people start to complain about them, or ignore them. In regard to the micro-videos, Clickz says this may be a moment in history akin to the old VW lemon ad that supposedly marked a change in how advertising agencies got their message across to the masses. According to Clickz,  “We can start sprinkling interactive experiences all over the place.” I say, please don’t! We already have enough “sprinkling” of advertising out there. In fact, so much so sometimes I even step in it. Outdoor media companies like Clearchannel and CBS have a networks of digital billboards all over Los Angeles. Drivers and pedestrians rubberneck to see the scrolling ads that flash full color messages even in the light of day. Digital billboards are not new, but they are novel. Now, you can expect to see a proliferation of next-generation media coming at a (fill in the blank) near you. Will this mark a new era of in-your-face advertising? Or will it be accepted as the norm as advertisers continue to find innovative ways to get advertising messages in front of you? I believe it will depend not on the vehicles (billboards, in-print videos, etc.) but on how entertaining or interesting the ads are and if viewers get some kind of value out of them. Will advertisers give viewers something to ignore, or will they offer up something of interest? If advertisers want to continue their conquest of innovative media, I would suggest they focus on the latter.

It’s late Sunday night at the time of this writing and I just came across a press release announcing The Future of Influence Summit by futurist and entrepreneur Ross Dawson.  If I set my alarm clock for sunrise, I can probably get to the airport in time to grab a flight up to San Francisco for the event, which sounds like an interesting one. According to the press release a new trend of “influencers” comprised of self-made influentials like bloggers, social media gurus and individuals are taking the power away from more traditional influencers like advertising agencies, newspapers and corporations. The shift away from “group influencers” to “individual influencers” is really giving advertising and marketing agencies heartburn as they scramble to figure out how to understand this new trend. In the pre-Internets era, people got their information about brands from traditional advertising like print, outdoor billboards and television commercials. The more a television commercial or print ad ran in the days of old, the more likely a person was to buy the product or service from that brand. Fast-forward to the Internets of the present. The media landscape has been fragmented into a million digital outlets, which is causing traditional advertising to lose its heavy-weight status. Media planners at advertising agencies now have to look at social media, PPC, banner, online video, rich media, email marketing, viral marketing, SEO, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and on and on and on. Couple that with the fact that now anyone with an authentic voice can build up a community of “fans” and influence if you buy a product or service and you’ve got some huge learnins to do if you’re a media planner in a traditional ad agency. Many times these “influencers” get huge audiences  because they carry with them the reputation of being an authentic, reliable voice. Take a recent blog entry where I wrote about Dave Carrol an irate United Airlines passenger who allegedly had his precious guitar broken by the airline. Instead of relying on customer service or filing a complaint with United,  Mr. Carrol took matters into his own hands by expressing himself in his own way; he wrote a song about the experience and released it on YouTube. The result was over 5 million viewers of his music video. Advertising agencies are still salivating trying to dissect and replicate the success. The point is that one individual can have a huge impact on a brand if the voice is deemed authentic. Long gone are the days that we take a corporations word for it when they tell us how great their products or services are. The individual is now the centerpiece of the show and advertisers better take notice. For more information on the program for Monday, check out The Future of Influence Summit Agenda

When I was a wee bit younger, the only way to get show times for a movie was to pick up the yellow pages, thumb through listings of local theaters, rotary dial the numbers one at a time and ask each human being on the other end what time Star Wars was showing. By the time I was done, Luke was finding out that Darth was really his father. Fast forward to today and you won’t see me touching a yellow pages book except when used as a booster seat. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use digital technology to find movies, read reviews, watch trailers or get peer feedback on the hottest summer films. According to a recent entertainment article in the Chicago Tribune, the box office success of Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” may have been due to the help of social media sites like Twitter. Let’s face facts; digital technology facilitates finding information on movies. Yet, you still see movie chains taking out ads in newspapers when everyone knows that you go to the internet or your iPhone App to get customizable information on the movies you seek. According to an article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette print-based listings may have seen their last days.  According to the article, “the top two U.S. chains, Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc., have begun to reduce or eliminate the small-type listings showing the start times for movies at individual theaters.” For those who still use the newspaper to get movie information, this could be another reason to abandon their subscription; as if they needed more. But come on people, let’s move out of the Stone Age and embrace the convenience and wonder that is the Internet. I really do enjoy watching trailers in HD right on my Mactop before making a decision to spend my hard-earned dollars on a movie. For me, pretty pixels work way harder than ink when selling a “talkie”. It makes me wonder why media companies still take out full-page ads promoting their films in newspapers. I find them a nuisance and wouldn’t put up a fight if they went the way of the Edsel.

Don’t expect people to come knocking down your door just because you have a website. The bottom line is you must have products and/or services people are interested in first and foremost. No duh, right? Let’s say you know there is a demand for what you’re offering and you are ready to attract traffic to your site. This is where Brandcasting comes in. Think of Brandcasting like casting a bag of seeds across a vast field (the Internet). Each seed that is cast will need to be nourished and watered in order to grow tall enough to have a presence. But once a presence is established, you will see many iterations of your brand sprouting up for any passerby to come across. The longer you nourish the seedling, the higher and more prominent it grows.

There are lots of ways to deploy intelligent brand marketing online. We’re just scratching the surface here. I haven’t even touched on press releases, banner ad campaigns, viral videos, ppc campaigns, newsletters, affiliate programs, email marketing and a whole slew of other tools a business or an individual can apply for effective Brandcasting.

The metaphor of scattering seeds and then nourishing them is an apt one. For example, lets say one such seed is intended to grow a branded blog for your company. Having the best blog or writing the best entries doesn’t mean diddlysquat unless someone is interested enough in what you’re offering. So it is really important that you nourish your blog with quality content and engaging information and “water” your blog daily, that is, add content to it daily.  Having a good mix of seeds is helpful too. Having a multi-level marketing strategy that employs the best combination of “seeds” may be the best way attract different niche audiences. So one set of seeds may be intended to grow the company blog variety, another seed is intended to create a presence via article marketing, another seed may be intended to give your brand a video presence, and so on. Ultimately, you want the right mix of seeds to catch the attention of the right mix of customers.

Whether you do it yourself, or hire a company like Brandsplat to deploy an intelligent online branding campaign, you have to choose a strategy and remember to manage your strategy as certain milestones are met. Brandcasting can boost your company’s visibility and over time can give your brand a lasting footprint on the Internet. Just remember that it takes time to build your presence online and don’t get frustrated if you don’t see results right away. Cast those seeds, water and feed them and watch them grow your brand into one that has a healthy presence on the web. Happy farming.